


Regrets (I've Had a Few)

by Cerusee



Series: sons of a certain father [2]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Alfred is tired, Bruce is pissed, Dick is upset, Gen, Jason is an emotional yo-yo, i hope this qualifies as a happy ending, it’s a lot better than the first three I had here, personally I’d like for Dick and Jason to have a good canon relationship, the audi q5 is the fatted calf, they do not, tw: Mentions of Suicide, tw: disassociation, tw: traumatic memory loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 06:20:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18138539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerusee/pseuds/Cerusee
Summary: It wouldn’t be the story of the prodigal returning, would it, if there wasn’t a seriously pissed-off older brother making his objections known?





	Regrets (I've Had a Few)

“Holy crap,” Dick said, as he stepped into the Manor kitchen.

_Jason_ fucking _Todd_ looked up from where he’d been bent over a large book, flat on the kitchen table, and gestured at him with a steaming mug. “Hey,” he said casually, as if he hadn’t disappeared from Gotham without even a word more than two years ago. Dick’s gaze flicked up and down, reflexively, noting the socked-but-shoeless-feet, the ratty jeans and plaid flannel button-down hanging open over a white shirt. Clean-shaven; hair neatly trimmed. Also, crucially, _unarmed_. Jason looked intact—maybe even a little better than intact; he had a light tan and radiated none of the tension Dick had grown accustomed to seeing in him, before he’d vanished.

“Does...Alfred know you’re here?” Dick said.

“Yep,” Jason said, without elaborating.

“And Bruce?”

“Yeah. He’s in the study, if you want him.” Jason slurped from the mug, and turned his attention back to the book.

Actually, Dick had just come by to raid the fridge—Alfred had mentioned that he’d made pot roast the other day, and that there were leftovers, and Alfred’s pot roast was more than worth the trip to Bristol—but he didn’t want to say so.

“And you’re just...here.” _Unattended_.

“Yes,” Jason said. “Did you want something? I’m actually kind of busy.”

“Busy doing _what?_ ” Dick dropped lightly into a chair opposite Jason, and stayed loose.

“Making dinner. It’s Alfie’s poker night. Also, I’m trying to get some of the reading done here?”

“The reading?” Dick said. “What reading?”

“For class.” Jason put down his mug and sat back in his chair. “Uh, Dick? What did Bruce tell people about me...y’know, coming back?”

Absolutely nothing, including the part about Jason actually being back. “All I heard,” he said carefully, “was that you’d been in contact and you were okay. And I got that from Babs. Bruce confirmed it, but he didn’t go into detail.” And Dick hadn’t been willing to press, not when Jason had been such a painful, fraught topic for so long. It was enough to know that Bruce’s burden had been at least partially lifted. If there was anything immediately important, Bruce would have shared, right? 

Apparently not.

“ _Huh_ ,” Jason said, thoughtfully. “I did wonder why I hadn’t seen any of you around. I mean, it’s been a month.”

It had? Dick had only heard about this last week. “Jason, are you... _staying_ here?”

“Is it a problem if I am?” Jason asked him, his voice suddenly flat. He crossed his arms across his chest.

_I don’t know, are you going to make it one?_ Dick thought. “You said something about class,” he said, his voice guarded.

“Yeah,” Jason said. “I’m enrolled in the BSN program at Gotham U. They’re affiliated with Mercy.” He watched Dick closely. “I’ve changed careers.”

“BSN. Is that—”

“Nursing.” Jason picked up his mug and took a casual sip from it that wasn’t casual at all. “When I told Bruce, at first he was all like _medical school, Jason, that’s great, the family could use another noble and distinguished doctor,_ but he got over it pretty fast. So, you know, kudos to him.”

“Jason,” Dick said. “No offense, but what the hell is going on?”

“Nursing program, making dinner, yes-I-live-here-again—Alfred forgave me, so I got my own room back, you know—”

“Excuse me, I think I do need to talk to Bruce, after all.” Dick stood up from the table. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Jason said, pleasantly. “I’ve still got to make the _huancaina_ sauce.”

“Hey. Jason—” Dick said, stopping halfway through the door. “I’m glad. That you’re alive.”

It was probably just his imagination that Jason muttered something that sounded suspiciously like _you sure?_ under his breath, as Dick left.

***

The study door was slightly ajar, so Dick only gave the briefest of knocks before he swung it open. “Bruce,” he said.

Bruce looked up the desk, with a slight smile on his face. “Dick,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you. Did you need something?”

“Pot roast,” Dick said.

“Ah,” Bruce said, and his face seemed to stay the same, but Dick could read the surge of fondness in it nonetheless.

“Also, maybe some answers.”

“Ah,” Bruce said again, and now the smile had gone slightly crooked. “That’s right, Jason said he was going to make dinner. I take it you ran into him, then.”

“He’s _living_ here, Bruce?” Dick said, eyebrows raised. “He says he’s enrolled in GU, studying _nursing_ of all things. He called it a _career change_ , but he didn’t explain what he meant by that.”

“Don’t give him any grief over the nursing thing, Dick,” Bruce said, slightly anxiously. “He’ll get prickly if you do. He thinks I’m disappointed that he doesn’t want to be a doctor.”

“ _Bruce_.” Dick said. “The only person I immediately want to give any grief is _you_ , because Jason being _here_ , living in the Manor, going to school—that is a world beyond knowing that he’s alive and safe, and that wasn’t something you felt I deserved to know. Did you tell _anyone_? Does Damian know? This is still his house!”

“Barbara has the gist of it,” Bruce said, distantly. “She’s been helping out with the paperwork. I asked her for her...discretion.” He turned a palm up. “And no. Damian doesn’t know. He’s still in San Francisco, so it hasn’t been necessary, yet.”

_Which lets you put it off indefinitely_ , Dick thought, cynically. “Whatever the hell else, you’d better not let that kid move back home to this...situation...without filling him in. He has the right to know.”

“ _Hnh_ ,” Bruce said. “He’ll adjust.”

“Bruce,” Dick said. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell anybody?” He didn’t have to wonder why Alfred hadn’t said anything about this; Alfred would follow Bruce’s lead, unless he thought Bruce was truly out of his gourd. Unless that hinting about the pot roast was his way of trying to force the issue.

Bruce put down the pen he’d been holding throughout their whole conversation. “It wasn’t your concern.”

“Oh for god’s sake, Bruce,” Dick snapped.

“You don’t trust Jason,” Bruce said. “That’s understandable. Do you trust me?”

“With my life,” Dick said, almost reflexively, even while a little part of him said _except about this._

“Stay for dinner. Jason’s a wonderful cook, you know.”

_Perfect_. The poison was in the— 

“Sure,” Dick said. “Love to.”

***

Dinner was some kind of weird beef-and-vegetable stew involving entire chunks of corn still on the cob, with a pungently garlic-scented white sauce on the side. Jason had scarcely missed a beat, when they’d come into the kitchen and Bruce announced that Dick was joining them for dinner. He’d simply left, and returned a minute later with a third place setting.

Dinner was also _weird as hell_. Bruce and Jason casually chatted through most of it, mainly details about Jason’s supposed classes, with few asides into the state of the rose bushes in the back garden. Bruce asked Dick about his civilian-goings-on, and listened, attentively. Jason ate his food, listened to Dick when he talked, and somehow didn’t make a scene. 

It might even have been pleasant, if Dick had been able to relax through any of it.

Afterwards, Jason had waved them both off, and started picking up the dinner dishes. “You guys need to talk some more,” he’d said.

He wasn’t wrong.

***

Dick thought they’d end up in the Cave, but instead, Bruce led him through the kitchen door, to stand under the relative darkness of the Bristol County sky.

“He’s better,” was all Bruce said, at first. “That thing about the career change—he’s given up the Red Hood.”

“And?”

“And I trust him not to hurt anyone, now. Not you, not the family, not criminals. Not anyone.”

“I don’t get it, Bruce,” Dick said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t. Letting him just...come home. After _everything_ he’s done?”

“After everything he’s done,” Bruce said, soberly. He glanced over at Dick, and his eyes glittered, in the moonlight. “Trust me on this, or don’t, Dick.”

“And what if I _don’t?_ ” Dick snarled, and didn’t stick around for an answer.

***

Dick was on his way down to the Cave, fully intending on beating the shit out of some sandbags, but in the study, poised just at the clock, he heard the whispery sound of a page being turned, and when he poked his head through the door, into the library—there was Jason again, like a bad penny that kept turning up, sitting in an armchair. Same oversized textbook as before, this time laid over legs half-drawn up onto the seat. His brow was pinched in concentration, but then his eyes flicked up, registering Dick’s presence, clocking his mood.

“Not a good talk, huh?” Jason said.

Dick stepped fully into the room. “I don’t think there _is_ such a thing when it comes to you, Jason.” 

“Wow,” Jason said. “That was...direct, I guess.” He put down his book on a side table, and twisted to stretch his long legs against the floor. “Okay. Let’s go.”

Dick tensed up, shifting into a stance that would allow for a quick strike.

Jason stayed in the chair. “Yeah, I’m not going to fight you,” he said, pleasantly. “I guess Bruce didn’t mention that part either? I’m fucking done with that, Dick. _All_ of it.”

“You’re done with that,” Dick said, neutrally.

Jason looked him dead in the eye. “I am done with that,” he repeated.

“No more running around like a homicidal maniac,” Dick said, with a bitter chuckle. “No more attacking your own family—”

That got a twitch out of Jason. _Aha_. But nevertheless, Jason said, “Nope. None of...that.”

“Am I really supposed to believe you’ve actually _changed?_ ” Dick said. “Why the hell should I? Did you have a big come-to-Jesus moment that we all missed?”

“I had a complete nervous breakdown,” Jason said, calmly. “And yeah, you all missed it. I don’t blame you.” In a sharper tone, he said, “But I handled it like old Frankie, you know? I did it _my_ way.”

Dick stared. After a moment he said, “And now you’re just _better_. You’re _fine_ , now. Now you just...aren’t going to hurt anyone, ever again. And we should all just forget about everything you’ve done—”

“ _I_ won’t forget it,” Jason said, sharply. “You can do whatever you want, Dick. _I’m_ never going to forget what I’ve done.” He stood up then, and Dick instinctively shifted back half a step. “For what I did to you, what I’ve done to the family—you can all hate me for it. That’s fair. I brought that on myself. But everything else wrong I’ve done—that’s not _yours_ to carry. It’s mine. I’m the one who has to live with it, not you.”

Jason turned to leave, and then, snatching up the book, he actually had the gall to yell, over his shoulder, “ _And leave Bruce the fuck alone!_ ”

***

“Explain this to me,” Dick said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I know this is a sore spot for Bruce. I’m glad he’s not grieving anymore, Al, really, I am. But this...this is something else.”

Alfred sucked at the wide plastic straw of his boba tea, and either completely inhaled the results, or managed to chew them without any external evidence. “Are you actually looking for an explanation, Master Richard?” he said, mouth mysteriously free of half-chewed tapioca balls. “Or are you merely venting your frustrations at what you hope will be a sympathetic party?”

Dick snorted, poking a chopstick at the last, abandoned dumpling on the plate sitting between them. “Can’t it be both?” It was probably cold by now. Dick picked it up with bare fingers and ate it anyway. Even cold, it was good. No wonder both Tim and Steph loved this joint so much.

“If you’d like,” Alfred said, dryly. 

“I just don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to take this seriously,” Dick said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t trust Bruce’s judgement when it comes to Jason, at _all_. And I don’t know why you would, either.”

“I don’t, necessarily,” Alfred said, dabbing his lips with a napkin. “Not always. But I do trust my own.”

“And?”

“I agree with Master Bruce,” Alfred said. “Master Jason is serious about his educational plans and his future. I do believe that he’s chosen a new path for himself and that he intends to keep on it.”

“And is that all that matters?” Dick said, with a hard stare. “Does the past not matter?”

“I’m sure it does,” Alfred said. “But you know perfectly well I’m not the one who can answer for it.”

***

“It’s not that I _blame_ them for wanting to believe that he’s changed,” Dick said, as he vaulted over a narrow alley. “But I still think they’re compromised where he’s concerned.”

_“I can’t help but notice you haven’t actually asked for my opinion on this. Is it because you’re sure I agree with you, or because you’re afraid that I don’t?”_

Ouch. “Oh come on, Oracle, don’t tell me _you_ don’t have any concerns—”

_“Of course I do. It’s my job to have concerns. But I’m helping out because I think he did go through some kind of serious mental breakdown—just with a very different outcome than the one we’d assumed—and if he’s been up to anything over the past two years besides what he’s said, I have yet to find any evidence of it. Right now, that’s good enough for me.”_

Dick stopped moving, perched on a chimney, unwilling to have this argument, time his jumps, _and_ try to spot crime all at the same time. “And if he snaps? If he changes his mind, has a bad day, decides that whatever psychotic delusions of grandeur he had before were the right way to go after all?”

_“It strikes me that that’s significantly less likely to happen if he has the support he needs to make this work,”_ Oracle said. _“I don’t think you—”_ She broke off.

“You don’t think I what?” Dick said, irritated.

_“I think that maybe the reason you’re finding this difficult to believe is that you never really knew what he was like, before,”_ she said, slowly. _“If you’d seen...all of this play out with Robin, or with Red Robin, wouldn’t you want to see them keep evolving, for the better? Wouldn’t you want to do whatever you could to make that happen?”_

“You’re saying I’m being paranoid because I don’t _care_ about Jason?”

_“Field names,”_ Oracle said, crisply. _“I’m saying that you’re not emotionally invested in who he was or who he still could be, because you’ve only known him at his worst.”_

“Can you blame me?” Dick muttered.

_“No,”_ Oracle said. _“I can’t. I don’t. But I think you should give more weight to the perspectives of the people who were a significant part of his life before it got blown up.”_ There was a brief pause. _“Poor choice of words, there,”_ she said, with the slightest hint of irony.

“And you?”

_“I’d like to think...that I’m occupying a healthy middle ground, here,”_ Oracle said. _“I’m less invested than they are, so I’m less compromised. And I’m not forgetting how much damage he’s done, or ignoring the possibility that he could go off the rails again in the future. But I knew him better than you did, Nightwing. He was a good kid, once—better than good. He was as good as you and me. And he deserved to have a good life, just like we did. If he’s standing here in front of me, telling me that he wants to get that back, and that he’s not going to hurt anyone again—I’m going to help him.”_

“Hmmph.”

_“He’s alive, Nightwing. Alive means he can still change. If we didn’t believe_ that _, we would all work very differently. Wouldn’t we?”_

Dick muttered a bad word, and leapt off the chimney.

***

Dick waited.

“ _Huh,_ ” Jason said, when he got sight of him. He stopped a good twenty feet away from the car that Dick was leaning against.

“It’s an Audi Q5, right?” Dick said. “Nice.”

“Thanks,” Jason said, keeping his distance.

“It’s new,” Dick observed. “Who paid for it?”

“Who do you think?” Jason said, wearily. “Dick, would it make you feel better if I told you that I insisted that he buy me some junky old used Saturn with a busted transmission, but he ignored me and got me this instead?”

_It would make me feel better if you weren’t here at all, Dick thought, or leaning on Bruce for money and making him think that you need him._

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jason,” he said.

“Cool. Because I didn’t. I _like_ this car. We went over a bunch of picks together, and I wanted this one.” Jason finally approached the car, digging the electronic key out of his pocket to unlock it. He opened the backseat, and tossed his leather messenger bag in the backseat. He opened up the driver’s side door, and looked over at Dick. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Are you getting in or not?” Jason rolled his eyes. “You didn’t stalk me to school just to tell me how cool my car is.”

“You do know this is the automotive equivalent of a pug dog, right?” Dick said, sliding into the front passenger seat. “Like...what’s with the squashed face?”

“It’s got character.”

Dick assumed they were on their way back to the Manor, but when they got to the Upper East Side, Jason made a surprise turn off Dillon Avenue, navigating through the neat grid of streets, and finally pulling up outside a small, unassuming sign declaring itself _Bruno’s._

“What are we doing here, exactly?” Dick said, following Jason’s lead and stepping out of the car.

“I forgot to eat breakfast, I’ve been in classes all day and I’m fucking _starving_. Personally, _I_ am going to stuff my face with an empanada,” Jason said, pushing through the door. “You can do whatever you want. We can fight some more or whatever when my stomach isn’t trying to crawl up my esophagus so it can strangle my brainstem.” 

A young man approached them, holding out his hand apologetically, and told them, in a thickly accented voice, “I am sorry, we are not open for dinner yet—”

Jason replied with flurry of Spanish that went by faster than Dick could translate on the fly. The young man’s face brightened, and he said, “ _Solo déjame preguntarte Marissa!_ ”

“She’ll say yes,” Jason said, with cheerful conviction. The young man disappeared, and then reappeared a minute later, with an older woman in tow, tying an apron behind her back and beaming.

“Jason, _mi amor_ ,” she said, fondly, dark eyes beaming. “Forgive Ángel. He’s only been here ten days, he didn’t know you. It’s been so _long._ ”

“A whole week and a half,” Jason told a bemused Dick, as she led them to a table.

“Okay, my Jason, I know what you will have. But how about your handsome friend?” Marissa asked him, with a single raised eyebrow that he found slightly refreshing in its lack of lechery. “I would tell him to get the _marisco_ , but the catch was bad this week, so _no, no, no._ ”

Dick gestured at Jason. “I’ll just get whatever he’s having, thanks.” After Marissa had departed, he asked Jason, “What am I having?”

“An _empanada de pino a la horno_ ,” Jason said. “I hope you like raisins.”

“Come here often?”

Jason shrugged. “A couple of times a week, after classes. It’s the best Chilean place I’ve found in Gotham so far.”

“They sure do like you a lot after, what, six weeks?”

“I tip well,” Jason said, with a grin that wrinkled the skin around his nose. “And they split tips with the back house, so that makes the kitchen staff a _lot_ more cheerful about starting early.”

_Yeah, and on whose dime?_

The empanadas, when they arrived, were not at all what Dick was expecting. Each one was roughly the size of his head, and had the smooth sheen of a baked crust, not the flaky crust of a fried pastry.

“ _Buen provecho!_ ” Marissa said, and dropped the bill, before she swept back off to the kitchen.

Dick ripped off a piece of the pastry and ate it. He had to admit, it was remarkably good. Even the raisins.

***

Jason paid with cash. Dick eyeballed it, estimating he’d put down about three or four times the actual total of the bill. No wonder Marissa had been so welcoming.

“Chile?” Dick asked, as they walked back out to the car. “Is that where you were for two years?”

“Part of it,” Jason said. “Chile. Peru. And Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, plus a solid stint in Brazil. My Portuguese is a little shaky, but you wouldn’t believe the scenery.”

“What the hell were you doing there?” _Did it involve organized crime in any capacity?_

“Seeing the sites,” Jason said, nonchalantly, pulling the car away from the curb. “Meeting new people.”

“Just playing tourist, huh?” Dick said skeptically.

“ _Hell_ no,” Jason objected. “I worked _plenty_ when I was down there.”

“I see,” Dick said, raising an eyebrow. “You were _working._ ”

“Shut your face,” Jason said, with a hint of irritation. “I worked in restaurant kitchens, mostly. Usually grunt stuff. Sometimes as a bouncer. Gigs where nobody was too worried about papers, or the whole gringo thing. They didn’t pay very much, either—but I didn’t need much at the time. Just enough to keep me going.” He grimaced. “So as you might imagine, _Dick_ , I also didn’t _save_ very much.”

And they all knew where Jason’s blood money had gone, after he’d disappeared. Dick conceded to himself that it _might_ be better for Jason to be sponging off Bruce right now than attempting to rebuild his finances using any of his previous preferred methods. Up to and including the illicit acquisition of unattended tires.

“How’d you land on South America in the first place?” Even if Dick bought that Jason had simply been aimlessly drifting through South America with no greater ambition than an open-ended vacation, it was hard not to harbor suspicions about the route that had taken him there. Such as, perhaps, involvement in some of the more sordid underground trade movements in Mexico and Central America. He hadn’t been too forthcoming about the details of his “complete nervous breakdown,” after all, and Jason had, certainly, at one point had significant interests in the Gotham drug trade.

Jason didn’t answer him right away. Dick looked over, and saw that Jason’s face was blank, eyes fixed on the road. “Couldn’t say,” he said, finally.

“Jason,” Dick said. “Can you honestly swear to me you weren’t mixed in anything shady, that you didn’t go south for some deal, or to fuck up some operation, that you didn’t hurt anybody—”

Jason abruptly yanked the car over to the shoulder of the highway, accompanied by a soundtrack of angry honking, car horns blaring and then fading as their angry drivers whizzed past. The Audi was just short of the the Robert Kane Memorial Bridge, the one that crossed from Gotham to Bristol County.

“No. I can’t swear to that,” Jason said, harshly, head bent low over the steering wheel. “I can’t, because I don’t have a clear memory of leaving Gotham in the first place. I don’t even know how I got to Ecuador. Right before that, I can remember—there was this one specific thing—” He shook his head, as if trying to banish whatever that memory was. “And I remember writing a fuck-off note saying that no one should come looking for me. That I was leaving forever, giving up the trade, just forget about me. No one ever came after me, so I figured you took it to heart. Who’d be sorry to see me go?” 

Jason rubbed his face with his hand, and then ran it nervously through his hair. “You know, I’ve actually been thinking about that note for weeks. Ever since Bruce said you guys never got it—I _know_ I wrote it, I remember that part.” He snorted. “It felt cathartic, writing out just all that toxic shit. I remember putting it in a mailbox.” One of his hands twitched. There was a long pause. “It’s...maybe possible that I was too out of it to account for the fact that the U.S. Postal Service won’t deliver mail that doesn’t have an address or a stamp on the envelope.”

“ _Jason_ ,” Dick said, slightly stunned.

“Next thing that’s actually concrete is walking down a street in Guayaquil. And...there’s a lot of missing stuff before all that, too,” Jason said. He looked up from the steering wheel, but avoided eye contact with Dick. “There are nights that are still a complete blank.”

“That’s…” Dick said, carefully, horrified by the implication that Jason had been so far gone he might well have killed people and not even remembered doing it. Dick never have characterized Jason as being _in control_ as the Red Hood, but that was some next-level mental instability. _You shouldn’t have been in South America, you should have been in Arkham_. “Unsettling.”

Jason blew a breath out. “You have no idea,” he said, quietly. “Those blackouts are worse than _before_ , because I always just told myself the other stuff was, you know,” he gestured vaguely. “Head trauma. Like maybe the pit couldn’t fix it all.”

“Before?” And then, a moment later, “the what couldn’t what?”

Jason finally looked over at him, and his face went blank again. “You know what, I don’t think I’m going to talk about this anymore.” He put the car back in gear, and craned his head over to the left, checking to see when it was safe to pull back into traffic.

“Whatever you’re talking about,” Dick said, slowly. “Does Bruce know it?”

“Yes.” Jason said shortly. “And Alfred.”

“And Babs?”

“She knows the important things.”

Dick ran a hand over his face. “You have no idea how hard it is for me to trust you,” he said. “You have done _so many things_ to hurt the people I love.”

“You mean, to hurt _Bruce_ ,” Jason said.

“ _My_ world doesn’t revolve solely around Bruce, Jason,” Dick said, bristling. _Good thing, or maybe I’d be as fucked up as you are._

“Liar,” Jason muttered.

Dick ignored him. “Everyone keeps telling me that even if I can’t trust _you_ —and I don’t damn well see why anyone would expect me to—that I should at least trust _them_ , because they have some kind of magical insight into you that I lack.”

Jason shrugged. “Honestly? I don’t see why you should trust me, either.” Dick opened his mouth, and Jason actually turned briefly to give him the stink-eye. “Why _should_ you trust me? You don’t _know_ me. You never wanted to. You made that perfectly fucking clear when we first met. You _never_ approved of me. Not even when I was—I pissed you off so bad just for existing that you went after _Bruce_ for taking me in.”

“That is _not_ what happened—” Dick said sharply.

“You never liked me, and you never wanted me in Bruce’s life. Everyone else was apparently fine and dandy, but not _me_.” Jason’s grip grew so tight on the steering wheel that Dick could hear the leather creak. “I’m sure it was a relief when I was accommodating enough to _die_ , and you got a better class of brother to work with.”

Dick tried to clear the red haze out of his mind, and fleetingly considered both punching Jason in the jaw, and also opening the passenger side door and flinging himself out of it. Both tempting options, both unwise, although Dick was fully confident he’d stick the landing better than Saoirse Ronan. He glanced out the passenger window, just in case, and stiffened. “Jason,” he said, instead, in an artificially calm voice. “We’re going too fast for the road.”

They were, in fact. Dick didn’t think he’d been doing intentionally, but the whole time Jason had been ranting at him, they’d been speeding up to the point of having to weave in and out of traffic to accommodate it.

Jason exhaled sharply, then eased off the gas. They’d finally crossed into Bristol, and the turn off the highway was coming up fast.

“Can you honestly tell me, Dick,” Jason said, in a less fraught tone, and with a hint of resignation, “that there wasn’t even a _tiny piece_ of you that was relieved when you thought I was dead again? Out of your hair for good, this time?”

The car was back at a safe speed, thank god. 

“Yes,” Dick lied, without a moment’s hesitation or an ounce of regret. 

Jason glanced over him with supreme doubt in his eyes.

“If you could have seen what Bruce was like, when he thought you’d _killed yourself_ ,” Dick told him, “you wouldn’t be able ask that question.”

Jason turned his eyes back towards the road, silent, lips pressed tightly together. The time for talking was apparently over. A few moments later, Jason swiped fleetingly under his left eye.

_Ah._

_He really is just as much your weakness as you are his_. It just made Dick feel sad. Not that he hadn’t always known that you could manipulate Jason by using Bruce, but—

_That’s guilt_ , Dick thought, studying Jason’s profile, and the thin, jagged wet line on the right side of his face—a tear track, appearing and vanishing with the passing headlights of every oncoming car. 

_Maybe that’s all I needed to see._

***

“I’m going to bed,” Jason announced, as soon as he reached the kitchen.

Alfred looked up from the stove, bewildered. “It’s barely six, Master Jason. Dinner won’t be ready for another hour—“

Jason didn’t stop moving. “I’ve already eaten!” he shouted from around the corner. Dick could hear multiple doors behind him being, if not quite _slammed_ , also not opened or closed with any delicacy. God, Jason really was just a petulant child, even now. A dangerous, petulant child.

Alfred turned to look at Dick, still hanging back in the kitchen’s open doorway. “Sir?”

“Jason and I were just chatting,” Dick said, finally coming into the kitchen and pulling the door shut behind him. 

“Were you?” Alfred said, coolly.

“I might have...ambushed him in the GU parking lot.” Alfred raised an eyebrow at Dick. “And interrogated him a little bit.”

Alfred stood silent and still, for a long moment. Then he turned back to the stove, and poked vigorously at a pan of something that smelled like onions and garlic. “I don’t question your intentions, Master Dick,” Alfred said, without looking back at him. “You only want to protect the ones you love.”

“Alfred…”

“Let me just say, sir, that you will _not_ be protecting me, nor Master Bruce, if you should work to drive Master Jason away from us again, or should you derail him from this course, a _worthy one_ , that he has chosen entirely of his own accord.”

_If you do something to mess this up, I’ll kill you_ , Dick mentally translated.

“Babs said—” Dick started, and then he trailed off. “Alfred. I _was_ a good brother to Tim, wasn’t I?”

“I do think so, yes,” Alfred said, still stirring onions. “Although the ultimate reckoning of that lies with Master Tim, not with me.”

_Shit_. “I know I was good to Damian.”

“Don’t make _me_ the arbiter of your successes and failures, Master Dick,” Alfred said, sounding tired. But he set the onions aside, and turned around. “You were the saving of Master Damian’s soul,” Alfred said. “I’ve scarcely been prouder of you in all the years I’ve known you.”

“What about Jason?” Dick pressed. “Have I really so awful with him?”

“Hard to say, sir,” Alfred said, his voice going as cold and dry as a desert night. “It’s only come up just lately.”

***

Dick knocked on Jason’s door.

Last night had gotten exceedingly awkward, between Alfred’s failure to approve of Dick’s...entire, ever, approach to Jason, and also because Bruce had given Dick the silent treatment at dinner, after Alfred announced that Jason wouldn’t be joining them. Dick didn’t know what Alfred had explicitly told him, or what Bruce might merely have inferred, but it was clearly enough to piss him off.

So here he was, knocking on Jason’s door, with coffee and and full set of donuts.

He hadn’t run this by anyone. He’d let himself in via key. Also, it was six am, so Bruce, presumably sleeping just down the hall, should be dead to the world. If not, it was because he was in the Cave, which would be even more convenient.

No reply. Dick knocked harder. Jason, had, in theory, gone to bed early last night. Right? He should be awake by now. Dick hadn’t even bothered with sleep, personally.

“ _What?_ ” Jason snarled, finally opening the bedroom door to the sitting room. His hair was mussed, and he was wearing...yesterday’s clothes? Maybe he hadn’t slept after all. “Oh Christ, not _you_ again,” he said, and firmly closed the door in Dick’s face.

He didn’t lock it, though, so Dick followed him inside.

“Coffee,” Dick sing-songed, waggling the cardboard carrying tray. “Donuts.”

“If one of those isn’t a chocolate creme I’m going to throw you out the window,” Jason said.

“We’re only on the second floor,” Dick said. “I can handle it. Have a Boston Creme, instead.”

Jason took the donut, and accepted a paper cup of coffee. “What is it now?” he said. His voice was hoarse. Maybe from more than just lack of sleep, Dick thought, studying him unobtrusively. His eyes were puffy.

“Babs said something to me,” Dick said. “And it kind of tracked with...what you said, last night.”

Jason sipped his coffee, looking skeptical. And tired.

“I don’t know how Bruce and Alfred and even Babs can trust you, Jason,” Dick said. “Except because they _love_ you. Because they know you in ways I don’t.”

Jason set down both the coffee and the donut on the rug, and jerked his hands away, wiping them on his rumpled shirt.

_That’s going to leave a grease stain_ , Dick thought, absently.

“Is there a point to this, Dick?” Jason asked. “Besides you getting to make it clear to me just how little use you have for me?” 

Jason probably didn’t realize how raw he sounded right now. Maybe he could have covered for it better, if he’d slept. Maybe not.

“You have another chance, here,” Dick said. “Everybody _wants_ to believe in you.”

Jason just nodded, briskly, as if to say, _I’m aware._

“I came back here because I wanted to tell you...I’m on board,” Dick said. He watched Jason’s face morph into almost comical disbelief, and he leaned forward. “Jason. This is me _also_ choosing to believe in you. And—if you’ll let me—I would like to actually try to be there for you when you need support. The way I wasn’t when you were a kid. The way I ought to have been.” 

He struggled with the next part; he frankly felt that any _I’m sorry_ s should be going the other way right now, all things considered, but—well, Alfred and Babs hadn’t been _wrong_ about this aspect of things, and as it evidently upset Jason a _lot_ , if Dick didn’t at least try to mend it, he didn’t think there was any chance that he could be involved with Jason’s life in any useful way going forward. And Dick was pretty sure Bruce wasn’t going to give serious weight to Dick’s take on anything Jason right now, unless he believed Dick was approaching Jason in good faith.

The simplest route to convincing Bruce of that was for it to be true.

“I felt like you deserve to know that I regret not having been the person I needed to be, when you were Robin, order to be able to treat you like a real brother. I promise that it wasn’t anything wrong with _you_ , back then. It wasn’t about where you came from. It was just me not being ready to accept the change that you represented in my life. Losing you was a catalyst—it was the _reason_ I tried so much harder with Tim. And with Damian, later down the line. It was important for me not to fail like that again. But you didn’t deserve my support any less than they did.” _Not then, anyway_. “And I am sorry for that.”

Jason stared at him. “Okay,” he muttered, and picked up his discarded Boston Creme from the floor and crammed half of it into his mouth, in a transparent ploy not to have to say anything more.

Not exactly an overwhelming response, but Dick had had a lot more time to think about this than Jason. It wasn’t a _no_. He’d take it, for now.

“You have another chance here.” Dick said softly. “And hopefully, so do I.” 

_I_ promise _you, Jason_ , he thought. _If you don’t waste your chance, I won’t waste mine._

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, Audrey, as always, for being the only thing that stands between me and “Dick leaned against a car. It was green. It had tires."


End file.
